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8 Public Officer, Public Officer Emeritus Of all Gaborone’s senior Kalanga elders, perhaps the most influential radical is Gobe Willie Matenge. A sketch of his life by Arthur Stanley with help from some of Gobe’s friends was privately published to honor him in 1996 on his seventieth birthday (Stanley 1996). Smiling benignly on the cover is Gobe, a strong figure, stocky and very dapper in a smart checked sportsjacket , formal white dress shirt, bright striped tie, and with a white handkerchief neatly folded in his breast pocket. The title, Notes Towards a Portrait of Gobe Matenge: Public Officer 1947–1981, Public Officer Emeritus 1981 [hereafter , Notes], captures his favorite self-image. Now a company director, investor , substantial shareholder, and, above all, a post–civil servant, Gobe is the public officer emeritus: a forceful spokesman in the public sphere for efficient service, a work ethic, professional standards, and the civic virtues in public life. looking backward, speaking forward Notes, a brief yet perceptive sketch, follows Gobe’s public life course chronologically, from his birth “on 28 February 1926 in the Matenge Ward, of which his grandfather was Headman, in Makaleng Village, about 55 kms northwest of Francistown” (Stanley 1996, 1) to his elderhood in the nineties, 146 his Honorary Life Membership in the Botswana Society and his recent speeches on controversial issues to the Society’s Kalanga Symposium, to the Association of Training and Development Officers’ Symposium on the Management of Training, and a presentation to the Salaries Review Commission (Stanley 1996, 13). The very careful progression of this chronicle frees me in this chapter and the next to unfold my understanding of Gobe’s public life course more thematically in ways that often start at the end before going back to the beginning.1 For example, I shortly cite his public addresses in elderhood, before I say much, in the next chapter, about his formative experiences in the public service. In part this Tristram Shandy–like approach, reflexive unfolding, is a matter of my own taste in storytelling, of course. But it is also a tactic of argument for the sake of retrospection, of having the sense of looking backward on experiences, issues, and encounters, complexly related, from a later perspective by a subject who has already lived a very full life, being, among other things, a husband to the same wife for more than fifty years2 and the father of six children3 as well as having many grandchildren.4 There is a further reason for this approach, which stems from the integrity of Gobe’s character. If sometimes changing his perspective from one life stage to another, on certain issues and in certain attitudes Gobe remains remarkably consistent throughout much of his adult life. Indeed, his personal integrity itself is something he values highly—so much so that if it is challenged, he has always been ready to take off his kid gloves and, if need be, fight aggressively and, in his phrase, “without diplomatic wrapping” (Stanley 1996, 8).5 For Gobe, this also means taking pride in empathizing with workers’ feelings , in not having lost his concern for their interests when he joined management , with responsibility for labor in Home Affairs: “When I became Permanent Secretary, I had to represent government’s view, but that did not mean I did not have my own view, my personal views. My grounding at the bottom level helped me a great deal to understand the feelings of people in lower grades. When they spoke out, I appreciated the points they were raising, and when it was possible to assist them, I assisted them. Where I realized they were going astray, I gave them some guidance. I was firm, if they went wrong; I was sympathetic, if they went right.” 6 When I asked Gobe, during one of our long taped interviews, how he would compare the early District Commissioner and Assistant Commissioners he served under, he reflected skeptically on retrospection, on his own perspective, now and then. Seeing things now from the viewpoint of a high level in the civil service made it difficult for him to comprehend how he actually saw things when he was at the bottom level: “There is no way that I can compare myself now with what I was at that time. But it’s reasonable for me to compare myself now with what I was when I was an executive officer or permanent secretary .” Even more, he was convinced that someone at the...

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